Personal experience

[tackattack]

Starting off with the fairy tales hunh.. alright ...Firstly there are more than 5 senses, that right there proves that you're limiting your perspective to only physical manifestations. You're entitled to your view but mine is no less rational because I believe we have a sense of balance, sense of timing, intuition, etc. And their validity, when you can't even accept they exist as tools to perceive the world, is another question entirely.

[chasm]

Starting off with the fairy tales hunh.. alright ...Firstly there are more than 5 senses, that right there proves that you're limiting your perspective to only physical manifestations.

Five senses: sight, taste, touch, sound, smell. There are other senses? What are they?

Well, I guess the Bible isn't fairy tales... I mean, there is rape and slavery and genocide and infanticide... but the magic is there.

You're entitled to your view but mine is no less rational because I believe we have a sense of balance, sense of timing, intuition, etc. And their validity, when you can't even accept they exist as tools to perceive the world, is another question entirely.

I never said I didn't accept those things. I believe in intuition as well, though I call it instinct. None of those things have to do with a personal experience counting as evidence.

[Eilonnwy]

anyone with a materialistic perspective on reality will deny any kind of subjective evidence as having any value. Those who accept the possibility of the intangible as a more than likely possibility use all evidence, especially using like evidence for valid proofs.

Personal experience is not evidence. I cannot take on face value evidence that amounts to "something happened because I wanted it to." There isn't a logical leap to assume that God intervened, no proof just assurances based on what could easily be coincidence. The person can be lying, the person can be delusional, the person could have misinterpreted events, etc... If I saw an alien in my house tonight, I may be convinced, but if I don't have anything tangible from that alien, I have absolutely no reason to expect anyone to believe me, as frustrating as that may be.

[chasm]

Personal experience is not evidence. I cannot take on face value evidence that amounts to "something happened because I wanted it to."

While I can agree that personal experiences don't amount to evidence because there is no evidence to back it up (pics or it didn't happen)... I can't agree with the second part of your statement. I think you've worded it wrong/weird. If you want to create a fountain of coke, for example, and take some mentos and put it in the coke, and create of fountain of coke, that is something that happened because you want it to.

[tackattack]

I'm going to have to strongly and respectfully disagree with you both on this. Personal experience is evidence. You use your human senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, 5 types of nerve endings for touch, balance, orientation, diretcion, kinesthetic, and several other internal senses which are up for debate but are more than likely true) to experience all the things you see as evidence, it's a necessary precursor for anything deemed as evidence and at it's very basest is a personal experience and subjective in nature. It's not "something happened because I wanted it to it's "something happened to me" and some people can leave it at that and it forms their subjective view of reality. I'm not stating what's real for me is real for you, just trying to get some people to accept the posibility is more than likely that something outside the , IMO closed minded, view of a materialist world observed only by the five senses. It's productiveness is debatable and certain few aspects are unproven but that's sounding like a whole other thread.

[chasm]

5 types of nerve endings for touch

I don't think each type counts as it's own sense...

balance, orientation, diretcion, kinestheic, and several other internal senses which are up for debate but are more than likely true

Hmm. I'm not sure those are senses, but I'll take your word for it, I guess. I mean, I was always taught we had just 5 senses...

P.S. I wikipedia'ed that shit. ^^

to experience all the things you see as evidence, it's a necessary precursor for anything deemed as evidence and at it's very basest is a personal experience and subjective in nature. It's not "something happened because I wanted it to it's "something happened to me" and some people can leave it at that and it forms their subjective view of reality. I'm not stating what's real for me is real for you, just trying to get some people to accept the posibility is more than likely that something outside the , IMO closed minded, view of a materialist world observed only by the five senses. It's productiveness is debatable and certain few aspects are unproven but that's sounding like a whole other thread.

If you had a personal experience, that's fine. Believe what you want. I'm not going to tell you it didn't happen. But don't expect me, or anyone else, to go along with it.

[tackattack]

This isn't about any choices in belief and I would not expect anyone to go along with anything without experiencing it in some way first.
This is about accpeting that there's more to life than just the basic physical materialsitic inputs that comprise the vast majority of our waking time.

http://fac.hsu.edu/langlet/general/guide...eption.htm

If you can accept that dolphins have echolocation and some fish can sense electromagnetic fields even though we don't have those senses, is it really that far of a stretch to think that people can see auras. We are after all walking talking energy machines. Is it that hard to believe that ESP, while inaccurate is a valid perception. If a dolphin only his sense of echolocation a miniscule portion of every day and doubted that he even could echolocate it'd be inaccurate as hell too.

[solja247]

Man, see every time I wish the red light would turn green it eventually happens. Are you saying that's god?

I don't doubt that this experience was real to you, but it could easily be a coincidence. And Occam's razor says we shave away any unnecessary explanations. So which is more likely...you asked for Dolphins and luckily there happened to be some around? Or a supernatural being that supposedly created life and can hear millions of prayers decided to answer your prayer, despite the single mom praying for food for her children, or the millions of people dying from all sorts of diseases and praying for a miracle, he decided yours was the one he would answer, and so he magically sent dolphins to your beach to cheer you up. (Holy run on sentence, batman!)

I'll go with the former.

Perhaps He did. In my toughest times in life its stopped me from doing anything that would harm myself.
Why did God answer my prayer from everyone elses?
Why didnt God anwer my friends prayer, which was to be healed and not die from cancer and answered mine?
I dunno.
Like I said, I have been there 12 years in a row and never seen dolphins there. Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps it was not.
However that is of course subjective evidence and I would never use it to try and convince someone there is a God.

So you saw some dolphins in the sea and took it as revelation? and of course everybody knows that there are no dolphins in the sea. if you had asked for a mermaid and seen one that would be something.. but you saw dolphins! and in the sea! not in a shopping mall or starbucks.

Exactly my point. Your scared of spiders? what? How could you be? You are so much bigger than them. Our experiences shape what we believe, think about it.

You mean those of us with a rational mind that use our five senses to make sense of the word around us, and therefore base our assumptions and beliefs on things that can be proven by our five senses, instead of believing in magic and fairy tales?

Rational mind? Perhaps a self deceiving mind?

[Captain Scarlet]

I'm going to have to strongly and respectfully disagree with you both on this. Personal experience is evidence. You use your human senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, 5 types of nerve endings for touch, balance, orientation, diretcion, kinesthetic, and several other internal senses which are up for debate but are more than likely true) to experience all the things you see as evidence, it's a necessary precursor for anything deemed as evidence and at it's very basest is a personal experience and subjective in nature. It's not "something happened because I wanted it to it's "something happened to me" and some people can leave it at that and it forms their subjective view of reality. I'm not stating what's real for me is real for you, just trying to get some people to accept the posibility is more than likely that something outside the , IMO closed minded, view of a materialist world observed only by the five senses. It's productiveness is debatable and certain few aspects are unproven but that's sounding like a whole other thread.

I disagree that personal experience is evidence but if you accept it is for a moment, then why i started this thread by stating I had a personal experience where I have directly apprehended the non existence of god. Why is that as real and as worthy? And if it is as an argument from evidence we are left exactly nowhere with it being evidence for a god.

[tackattack]

I haven't discounted anything you've said directly so far and due to the subjectiveness of experience I'm willing to grant great leway. But, how exactly do you have an experience of not having an experience? If we're not rationalizing beliefs, then I'll assume here that experience preceeds analysis. If you never experienced anything and conclude that the default position is "no God exists" because no explination has arrisen; that's one thing and perfectly fine. If you're saying you've actually experienced something that disproves God, that's something entirely different. If you've had any experience with god at all doesn't that lend more credibility towards the existence of God then? Wouldn't the rest then be rationalization to deny that evidence. Those are supposition to your thought process, but I'm just answering your questions and trying to figure out where your questions are going.